Japan bets all on hydrogen as the protagonist

These cars are as quiet as electric cars and only emit ‘water’, but for now there are few that circulate. There are only 11,000 cars with hydrogen fuel cells worldwide.

In Japan the bet is led by manufacturers such as Toyota, which with its Mirai model (‘future’ in Japanese) wants to raise the advantages of that bet. Even so, the cost of the vehicle is already a major obstacle. Even with government subsidies, this car costs $ 50,000 in Japan, due in part to production costs.

The city of Tokyo wants to have 100 hydrogen buses during the 2020 Olympics, and reach 40,000 cars that year on its roads, a seemingly overly optimistic goal.

Still the advantages are obvious. The clearest is its way of charging, very similar to that of combustion cars. One stops at a hydroelectric station or charging point and charges in just a few minutes as if filling the gas tank.